The Ashiel Mystery, Mrs. Charles Bryce [e novels to read online .txt] 📗

was, perhaps, in the

nature of things that the puzzles he solved correctly received so much

more publicity than was given to his mistakes; but he often could not

avoid wishing that less were expected of him, and that his reputation had

not grown so tropically on what he could but consider insufficient

nourishment.

 

In early days, after leaving Oxford, he had gone into an architect's

office and had flourished there; till one day an accident had turned his

energies in the direction they had since taken.

 

A crime had been committed during the erection of a house he was

building, and, when the police were at a loss to know how to account for

the somewhat peculiar circumstances, the young architect, going his

ordinary rounds of inspection, had seen in a flash that there was

something unusual in the disposal of a portion of the building material;

which observation, with certain deductions following thereon, had led to

the detection and arrest of the criminal. From that time on he had been

more and more drawn to the fascination of tracing events to their

causes, when these appeared connected with deeds of violence and fraud,

till of late years he had completely dropped the study of the carrying

powers of wood and stone for the more interesting lessons to be derived

from the contemplation of the strange vagaries indulged in by his fellow

human beings.

 

He kept, however, a strong taste for art and all that appertained to it;

more especially he was devoted to the collection of old and rare

bric-à-brac. There was not a curiosity shop in London that did not know

him, and he was equally happy when he had discovered some dust-hidden

treasure in the back regions of a secondhand furniture shop, or when he

was engaged in running to earth some human vermin who up till then had

lain snug in his own particular back region of crime, straining his ears,

in a mixture of contempt and anxiety, as the sounds of the hunt went by.

 

Having finished his letter, Gimblet put his stylo in his pocket, and

turned round to look at the clock.

 

"Twenty minutes to four," he said half-aloud. "I wish to goodness people

would keep their appointments punctually, or else not come at all."

 

Five more minutes passed, and he got up and went into the hall.

 

"Higgs," he called, and his faithful servant and general factotum came

out of the pantry.

 

"I am going out," said his master, taking up his straw hat. "If anyone

calls, say I could not wait any longer. Ah, there's the front-door bell.

Just see who it is."

 

He retreated to his sitting-room while Higgs went to the door of the

flat. A minute or two later Lord Ashiel was ushered in.

 

"I'm very sorry I'm late," said he, as the door closed behind him, "but

you know what kept me."

 

"Not the young lady, surely," said Gimblet; "you were to see her at

twelve o'clock this morning, weren't you?"

 

"Yes, but she telephoned to me after lunch. By Jove, Gimblet, I believe

you have got hold of the right girl this time." Lord Ashiel's tone was

enthusiastic. "If she turns out to be half as nice as she looks, I shall

be ever grateful to you for routing her out."

 

"Indeed, I am very glad to hear it," replied the detective. "And do you

observe a resemblance in her to your family; do you feel satisfied that

she is your daughter?"

 

"I can't say I do see much likeness," Lord Ashiel confessed rather

reluctantly. "I thought at one moment, when she smiled, that she was like

her mother; but otherwise she did not strike me as resembling either of

us, I am sorry to say."

 

"Did she know her history at all?" asked Gimblet. "Did she claim you

as father?"

 

"No, she had never heard of me, as far as I could make out. And she

assured me that Sir Arthur Byrne has no idea whose child she is."

 

"That certainly seems very improbable," Gimblet commented.

 

"Yes, it does. Still, I feel sure she was speaking the truth. Why,

indeed, should she not do so? It seems that Byrne has married again, and

that his wife has already three daughters of her own; so, as she says, he

would probably be glad enough to get the fourth one off his hands, as

they are not well off."

 

"Yes," said Gimblet. "I knew that. No, there seems no reason why Sir

Arthur Byrne should not have told her about you if he knew she was your

child. What is odd, is that he should not have known it."

 

"He had promised his first wife not to make any inquiries, it seems,"

said Lord Ashiel.

 

"Well, he is an uncommon kind of man if he kept that promise,"

Gimblet remarked.

 

"He was devoted to his first wife, this girl told me," said Lord Ashiel.

"You never knew Lena Meredith, Gimblet, or you would not be surprised

that people kept their promises to her. She was my wife's friend, as I

told you, and I only saw her once, but I don't think I shall ever forget

her. It was just after my wife's death, and I was too heart-broken to

take much notice of anyone, but she was the sort of woman who sticks in

your memory, and I can quite understand a man being infatuated about her,

even to the point of curbing his curiosity for a lifetime on any subject

she wished him to leave alone. I went to see her, you know, about the

baby. I remember, as if it was yesterday, how I told her the whole story.

I told her how I had met Juliana two years before, and how, from the

first, we had both known we should never care for anyone else. I told her

about my old grandfather, from whom I had such great expectations, and

who wouldn't hear of my marrying anyone except the cousin, still in the

schoolroom, whom he had picked out as my future wife.

 

"It was his wish that we should be married when I was twenty-five and

the girl eighteen; but I was not yet twenty-two, so that there were at

least three years of grace before he could begin to try and impose his

design upon us. And he was old and ill, and I had heard that the doctors

didn't give him more than a year or two, at most, to live. I thought

that if Juliana and I were married secretly he would die before the

question of my marriage had time to become one of practical politics;

and I persuaded her to agree to a private marriage, which we would

announce to the world as soon as my eccentric old grandfather was safely

out of it. There was no possible obstacle to our marriage except the old

man's domineering temper. Juliana Sandfort was my superior in every

possible sense, worldly or otherwise; but I came of a good family, was

to inherit an old name and title, and a more than sufficient fortune so

long as I kept on the right side of the old Lord, and we both knew that

there was no objection to be feared from her relations or from any other

one of mine. In short, much as she disliked doing things in that

hole-and-corner sort of way, and ashamed as I was at heart of asking her

to, we neither of us could see much actual harm in the idea, and we were

married accordingly at a registry office in London. Everything would

have been well, and all would have gone as we hoped, but for the one

unforeseen and horrible calamity. My wife died six months before my

grandfather, on the day her baby was born."

 

Lord Ashiel paused, and sat gazing before him, over Gimblet's shoulder.

There was a look on his face which showed that for the moment he was

blind to the scene that lay in front of him, and that he saw in place of

the bureau which stood opposite to him, and of the Oriental china which

was the detective's special pride, and on which his eyes seemed to be

fixed, some vision of the past which was far more real than the

unsubstantial present. Presently he went on talking in a reflective

undertone:

 

"All this I told Mrs. Meredith, and a great deal besides, for I was still

in the first violence of bitter, self-reproachful grief. I wanted to be

rid of the child, the cause of the catastrophe, whom I hated as

vehemently as I had loved its mother, and I begged Mrs. Meredith to help

me to dispose of it in such a fashion that, to me at least, the little

one should be to all intents and purposes as dead as she was. Babies, I

knew, had not a very strong hold on life, and I hoped, as a matter of

fact, that it might really die, but this I did not dare to say aloud.

Mrs. Meredith was kind to me. I remember well how good and sympathetic

she was. She had heard most of the story from Juliana, whose friend she

was, and it was at her house that the child was born. We had confided in

no one else. She sat silently for a while after I had finished what I had

to say, till at last she turned to me and tried to persuade me to alter

my intention of disowning the baby. But I repeated doggedly that unless

she had some alternative way to suggest of getting rid of it, I meant to

leave the little girl at the door of one of the foundling hospitals, and

that I would take her that very night.

 

"At length, seeing that I was resolved, she said she thought she could

manage better than that. She had a friend, she said, an elderly Russian

lady, who was a widow and childless. This lady was anxious to adopt a

little English girl, and had lately written to ask her to find her a baby

whom she could bring up as her own child. There was no reason why

Juliana's baby should not be the one. She would write at once and suggest

I was greatly relieved at this idea. Although I had been determined

to do as I proposed, whatever opposition I might meet with, my conscience

had not been willing to let me leave my child on a doorstep without

protesting, and, little though I heeded its condemnation, I was glad to

be able to get my own way and at the same time to silence the voice of my

inward critic.

 

"The plan seemed simplicity itself. My wife, as I have told you, had no

parents living. Her brothers and sisters, who were all married and

living in different parts of the country, had been led to believe that

her death was the result of an accident. Mrs. Meredith had even managed

to prevail on the doctor to lend himself to this fiction; for, my

grandfather being yet alive, there was still every reason not to declare

our marriage, while there seemed to be none in favour of doing so, and I

shrank from the questionings and scenes which publicity now would not

fail to bring upon me. Before I left Mrs. Meredith we had agreed that

she should at once communicate with her Russian friend, whose name I

refused to let her tell me.

 

"I have told you before to-day, Gimblet, of all that has happened since.

How I took passionately to books as a refuge from my sorrow; how, at my

grandfather's suggestion, I had been by way of working for the

Diplomatic Service; of how I now worked in good earnest, and in course

of time, and after my grandfather's death, found myself attached to our

embassy at Petersburg. During the two years I spent there I made the

acquaintance of Countess Romaninov. One day when I was talking to her

she happened to mention that she had once known an English lady, Mrs.

Meredith, and I came to the conclusion that the little girl who lived

with her must be none other than my own child. As you know, I could not

stand living in the same town as she did, and for that, and for other

reasons, I left the Diplomatic Service and returned to England, where I

have lived a quiet life on my place in Scotland ever since. Eight years

ago, as you know, I married for the second time, and after a few years

of comparative happiness, found myself again a widower, my second wife

and her child dying within a few months of each other, when my boy was

only four years old.

 

"It is more than a year, now," continued Lord Ashiel, after a pause,

"since the girl Julia Romaninov came to my sister in London, with